Unreliable Guess-o-meter, range anxiety, and the frigid weather...

[Lightning Rod]

I keep reading where people drive their Lightnings down to the wire as far as range and miles left is concerned. If I set out on a trip that I figured I could make round trip on a single charge and circumstances (weather, mountains, traffic jams etc.) impedes my expected range, I already have my mind set to make a charge stop(s) if I even remotely think I may not make it with my initial expectations.

I'm buying this truck knowing that it's going to be radically different from my ICE F-150, so my thinking and expectations are going to be all together different. Yes, it sucks that cold weather drastically Impedes the range of this vehicle and that's why my expectations for this truck is not what it is for "regular" gas powered trucks. I thought about ALL of these differences in this truck well before I ordered. Because I average 6 or 7 thousand miles per year, I figured that I can live with these limitations/ tradeoffs compared to my ICE truck because of my low mileage driving.

I tell myself that it's going to be a learning curve for a good while because there are noticeable pros and cons to owning these 1st generation electric F-150s, and it's NOT going to be like driving ICE trucks.

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[TaxmanHog]

The recent updates 3.5.5 or MIL-DTE e'ffd with the Ford Pass app and truck console predicted range at stated percentages, it's using the summer optimum value of 2.4 MPK..... stick to your drivers cluster current trip MPK value and calculate from the present SOC, as others said above the 1.6 would have been a better prediction use and endurance up and back.

Yesterdays charging session completed at 95%, now way I'm getting 298 miles range, if you use this value you're destined to failure in our cold conditions.

Hopefully the next few weeks of driving history will overwrite our excessively optimistic value with reality, I still would not trust this based on my actual use case, [non-hyper-miler mode of operation] is 1.6 to 1.8 MPK

 

[jazzmanmonty]

I personally avoid highways in the cold and it helps. We've had a week or so of sub zero temps here in Illinois. I leave truck plugged in when not driving and precondition each drive. Lowest i've seen my SR range hit so far is 146mi. I drove to many places that i could get to quicker on the highway, but i'll take the side streets which may take 10 or 15 min longer. If my cabin is warm pretrip, I don't have many problems averaging close to 2.0mi/kwh leaving defrost and foot settings on at 68 and fan speed on low.

As much as I'd love to have close to the same range in winter as summer, my wife and I understand that in cold months, this is a local vehicle. We use our other car for longer trips and don't have a problem with that. That said, my wife usually does 100 miles per day for work and doesn't worry one bit. This is a Gen1 EV pickup for Ford, and we all knew it wouldn't be the final product. So just enjoy it and learn how to adapt to it. Maybe in a couple years, we'll all be trading in for a new Lightning with new battery tech that'll hopefully get us 300mi winter.

 

[Pioneer74]

Hopefully the next few weeks of driving history will overwrite our excessively optimistic value with reality

It won't. After the DTE update the GOM became useless. Ever since the update my DTE is anywhere between 285 and 290 miles at 90% charge, despite the fact my Mi/kWh is around 1.6 on my commute.

Ford broke the GOM. Do not trust it unless you live in warm weather. I said in the other thread stuff like this was going to happen. Sooner or later somebody is going to get stranded somewhere.

 

[nanohead]

It won't. After the DTE update the GOM became useless. Ever since the update my DTE is anywhere between 285 and 290 miles at 90% charge, despite the fact my Mi/kWh is around 1.6 on my commute.

Ford broke the GOM. Do not trust it unless you live in warm weather. I said in the other thread stuff like this was going to happen. Sooner or later somebody is going to get stranded somewhere.

This... I don't trust the Lightning to get my family somewhere safely unless conditions are absolutely optimal and I have numerous safety charge locations on the route.

I more feel like an idiot for paying $11K more for 100 extra miles that I don't actually get to use. I also love that the recommendation is to use the heated seats and steering wheel instead of cabin heat, but they deleted my heated steering wheel and no one on this planet can tell me if it will ever get installed.

I completely understand and am aware of the limitations of the technology, but the fact that the range is so wildly less than we all thought we were buying, is just lousy. It doesn't, as the Brits say, "do exactly what it says on the tin"

The Mach E has had its teething problems, and generally Ford has done the right thing, and that car is generally a joy to own and drive (except when they do an "update"!)

But the more we all discuss this on this thread, Wow! The Lightning has some severe limitations that are out in the open, and definitely impact what many of us thought we were buying.

 

[jefrank]

It won't. After the DTE update the GOM became useless. Ever since the update my DTE is anywhere between 285 and 290 miles at 90% charge, despite the fact my Mi/kWh is around 1.6 on my commute.

Ford broke the GOM. Do not trust it unless you live in warm weather. I said in the other thread stuff like this was going to happen. Sooner or later somebody is going to get stranded somewhere.

I must have gotten lucky... my GOM is still tracking to winter usage pretty well. This past weekend it was off a bit but with the first real cold of the season and those crazy winds it wasn't nearly as off as it could have been.

Oddly, though, it's been adding to the same "This Trip" since sometime last week with multiple on/off cycle, overnight parking, etc.

 

[metroshot]

.........
Ford broke the GOM. Do not trust it unless you live in warm weather. I said in the other thread stuff like this was going to happen. Sooner or later somebody is going to get stranded somewhere.

Agree - the GOM is just a guess and since the normal driver screen is so much info and distracting, I like @Tony Burgh put mine in calm mode and use the EV charge level the same a fuel gauge on an ICE.

So happy I live in a warm climate year around - have not seen any range drop even in late December with sunny, warm, 80+ degree temps...

EVs are definitely happier in warmer weather!

 

[Pioneer74]

This... I don't trust the Lightning to get my family somewhere safely unless conditions are absolutely optimal and I have numerous safety charge locations on the route.

I trust my Lightning to get me where my math says I can. All you have to do it multiply your mi/kWh x battery percentage x 131.

For example, my GOM said 285 mile range at 90% this morning. I know that's wrong. It should read around 190 like it did before it was updated.

1.6 mi/kWh x 90% x 131 = 188 miles. I trust this number.

 

[daveross1212]

but the fact that the range is so wildly less than we all thought we were buying, is just lousy.

This is a surprising exaggeration from someone who already owns an EV. The stated range (300+ for ER) is and was always under ideal conditions and is no different than stated vs real world range of any other EV. Of course there will be significant range reductions for cold weather and/or all highway driving. I would think most of us/we understood that when buying the vehicle.

I had the exact same drive for family Xmas - 70 miles each way. I started with 90% SOC. No preconditioning (truck wasn't even plugged in). Trip is 50% highway (~80mph) and 50% split lane @ 55mph. Made it back with ~22% SOC. I mention this because not once did I think about range, chargers available, limiting climate control, etc etc. I knew that ~140miles is well within the available headroom and off we go. Truck working as advertised.

 

[cwstnsko]

It sounds like you have the latest DTE update which seems to have made the GOM much more Tesla-like in that it seems like it ignores recent driving and reverts back to the EPA rating after a 80%+ charge on L2 charging. I find over the length of a multi-charge road trip, the GOM becomes more accurate, until I charge on L2 to greater than 80%, then it jumps back up.

 

[Amps]

the fact that the range is so wildly less than we all thought we were buying, is just lousy.

My basic takeaway is that the truck's range of 320 is not true in general.

You bought the 320 mile or 2.44 mi/kWh range based upon the combined EPA test cycle numbers. The problem is nobody drives the EPA test cycle. Lightning's highway range is separately rated under the EPA Highway cycle at 283 miles or 2.16 mi/kWh.

As others have said, pay attention to your the mi/kWh while underway. Call that the Ford personal test cycle. I was easily equaling the 2.4 kWh/mi number (320 miles) around town until the bitter cold. Now, long term average is 2.2 (288 miles). The last few days have been 1.5 without battery or cabin pre-conditioning, today 1.8 with pre-conditioned battery and cabin on the same 55 mile mixed highway/city route outdoor 19º F with headlights, and heat@70ºF. That's still 196-235 miles.

 

[Bandit216]

It sounds like you have the latest DTE update which seems to have made the GOM much more Tesla-like in that it seems like it ignores recent driving and reverts back to the EPA rating after a 80%+ charge on L2 charging. I find over the length of a multi-charge road trip, the GOM becomes more accurate, until I charge on L2 to greater than 80%, then it jumps back up.

Yep. The new GOM software update is apparently designed to cut down on the number of online posts declaring Ford gave them the wrong size battery or how the truck sucks in the cold - not to actually improve cold weather range estimates.
One thing I'd love to see Ford do is to put the actual available kWh of the battery on the driver's display. The information is available, I display it on my Sync screen using the Car Scanner app, so why not put it on the drivers display all the time?

 

[Pioneer74]

Yep. The new GOM software update is apparently designed to cut down on the number of online posts declaring Ford gave them the wrong size battery or how the truck sucks in the cold - not to actually improve cold weather range estimates.
One thing I'd love to see Ford do is to put the actual available kWh of the battery on the driver's display. The information is available, I display it on my Sync screen using the Car Scanner app, so why not put it on the drivers display all the time?

I would be happy with the battery percentage displayed on every screen like the Calm Screen offers. Sadly, I don't think either of us is going to get what we want.

 

[nanohead]

Thankfully, not too much lecturing on this thread. But if you read lots of the responses, many of them talk about the technical aspects of electricity consumption and distance, and how many people have done their own calculations, as well as those who've used OBD based monitoring devices and software.

Just think of the insanity of that. We paid $80K+ for a consumer product, then needed to do additional work to use it reliably, or buy supplemental products, just to use it in a way that it should just work out of the box. This was my whole point to starting this thread. And lots of people making excuses for it as well, which is I guess a blend of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance.... We bought these trucks, they don't really do what they're spec-ed for but its ok, we know how to deal with it. Sounds nuts actually.

My whole thesis here, is that while yes, we can all calculate things on our own, and plan each and every mile, etc, vehicles like the Lightning should just work for us.

Our Mach E, while not perfect, is fairly reliable at dropping 25% +/- in the cold.. this is our second winter with it. The Lightning dropped nearly 50% in actual use via the GOM reading. And no, I do engineering in my work life, I don't want to do that stuff just so I can get somewhere reliably in my brand new car. I was literally watching the dash where every 5 miles consumed 10-12 miles on the GOM. That is awful. I want to just get in the car and go, not fill out a spreadsheet, file a report, do multiple calculations, and stand on my head a point to Jupiter with my pinky finger just to get where I'm going

And the root cause though, is in fact in the marketing of the extended range.... errr. range. I absolutely knew that it was gonna be less in the winter. I bought the ER believing that I could do 220-230 miles reliably. Turns out, that's a wing and a prayer based on the past few days.

Even today, I went around town, maybe a total of 7 miles at 35-40 MPH, and the GOM showed around 30 miles consumed.

Sorry, all the excuses in the world won't make that make any sense to me.

 

[jimfigler]

Well, I followed all of Fords recommendations, but was scared silly with range anxiety on Xmas day. It was around 17 degrees in northern NJ. Point of note, we've owned a Mach E for the past year and half and am familiar with some form of cold weather range decay. Also an engineer, and I understand many of the trade-offs the engineers at Ford dealt with to get this truck into production as designed. I also understand this is the first winter with these F150 Lightnings in service, so we are all going to have to figure this out on the fly.

Kept the truck plugged in yesterday morning, couldn't get the "precondition" schedule thing to work, but did 2 cycles of remote start for 15 minutes, and then actually got in and started the truck with it plugged in. It gave me this idiotic Pro Power message, which makes no sense.... It was plugged into the Charge Station Pro and the charger was charging (flashing blue light). While it was plugged in and on, range INCREASED from 302 to 306 miles, presumably as the truck was heating itself, but I have no way of knowing.

We then set out for the family gathering, which was 70 odd miles away. I actually decided to modulate speed, and try to maximize for range on the drive. I stupidly assumed that the GOM saying 306 miles of range should smartly get me through the 140 mile round trip. Wrong

The cabin was warm, we turned down the seats and set heat to 68. There were three of us in the truck. It was cold outside, and while we tried turning the heat off, it got too cold in the cabin.

Range was plunging at DOUBLE the rate it should have during the first leg of the trip, which was 70 miles. Range dropped from 306 to 165, which is a giant miss..... 141 GOM miles consumed for 71 real miles. That is bad... really bad.

We left to return home after around 5 hours, the truck wasn't plugged in, and I did 1 remote start to heat the cabin. During the remote start period, the truck lost another 5 miles and was at 160 when we set off for the 70 mile return trip. At this point, I was pretty terrified we weren't going to make it, and while there is 1 charger on the route, we were time pressed and was hoping we'd just scrape by.

Again, the GOM plunged by way more than actual miles. I had cruise set to 65, seats on 1, cabin heat on 68. By halfway through the trip, I went into white knuckle mode, and became convinced the battery would die hard before I could make the driveway at home. I was somewhat shocked that this $80k+ truck with a published range of 320 Miles could barely make 140 miles. Not good

By the last 1/3rd of the trip, I was cycling 1 pedal drive regen somewhat aggressively on the down hill sections of the southern most part of the NYS thruway, and started to reduce range decay a bit. The short of it is, the 141 mile round trip consumed 232 on the GOM, which is terribly unsatisfying and candidly, just bad.

My basic takeaway is that the truck's range of 320 is not true in general. All the stuff that the Ford EV GM said during the SOC youtube interview about cold weather operation didn't work at all, and that those of us who purchased the Lightnings as a family hauler need to be super cautious this winter to not get stranded.

Choosing between range and freezing inside the cabin, or being basically comfortable inside the cabin and getting stranded is a terrible trade-off. The fact that they deleted my heated steering wheel doesn't help.

This truck is one of the most beautiful vehicles I've owned (out of way more than 100), but if it can't be reliable with some reasonable range, then it might be too early for something this big and heavy to be a practicable EV for family service.

Probably already said but 1.6 kWh /mile would give you 216 miles. Pretty close to 30% reduction. Still not great. I agree the truck is not a great family mover in its current state. At least I wouldn’t feel comfortable

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